Photos: Partition museum in Amritsar recounts stories of despair and hope

The Partition Museum, a first of its kind memorial museum to this foundational event in the shaping of India and Pakistan, opens on August 17, 2017 in Amritsar, Punjab. An exclusive sneak peek at this monument to the Partition of India. ...read more

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Amritsar has been chosen as the location of the first physical museum dedicated to Partition, a defining moment in the history of the sub-continent that led to the momentous creation of India and Pakistan on August 15, 1947. The Partition Museum will open to public viewing on August 17, 2017. Chief minister Capt. Amarinder Singh is expected to inaugurate the museum. (HT Photo)

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Located barely 32 kilometres from the border with Pakistan, the long-neglected red-brick Town Hall building at Katra Ahluwalia near the Golden Temple complex comes alive after undergoing two years of work in preparation for the grim stories that the exhibits in the 14 galleries inside unfold. To encourage more visitors tickets are priced at ₹10 (25 cents) for Indians and ₹150 ($2.30) for foreigners. (Ravi Kumar / HT Photo)

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Amritsar was the transit point of the mass migration on both sides of the border which displaced nearly 15 million people from their ancestral homes. The museum recounts the painful experience of people on both sides through poetry, first-person accounts, paintings, installations, donated mementos and artefacts from individuals. (HT Photo)

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A giant saw installation cuts through a brick wall at the Partition Museum in Amritsar. The Partition Museum is a chronicle to an event that lacerated a nation and is an attempt at bridging the divide of 1947. Put together through individual efforts, supported by the government in giving this colonial building for display, the museum is a work in progress with material related to 1947 trickling in as people share stories and mementos related to the troubled times. (Ravi Kumar / HT Photo)

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The museum has extensively delved into and displayed Hindustan Times archives to tell stories of despair in the hope that tomorrow’s generations will see peace on both sides of the border. The inspiration for the museum came from the stories of Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto, himself a brutally honest chronicler of the event, revealed Kishwar Desai, the driving force behind this first of its kind attempt at a memorial museum in India. (Ravi Kumar / HT Photo)

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The exhibition space opens to portraits in black and white of victims and witnesses to the partition and the stories that have survived 70 years on. The viewer is met with more pictures, video narratives and paintings by select artists such as Satish Gujral, SL Prasher and Krishen Khanna who migrated from Lahore, the cultural capital of undivided India. (Ravi Kumar / HT Photo)

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Amritsar itself was reduced to an inferno during Partition with half the population fleeing across borders drawn by the vicious Radcliffe Line. Over one million people lost their lives in rioting and communal violence during what is one the world’s largest human migrations. (Ravi Kumar / HT Photo)

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Photos and news items documenting the socio-political impact of the India-Pakistan Partition seen at the museum in Amritsar, Punjab. The events of Partition have been foundational in shaping the identity of both nations and their peoples, inspiring countless works of art and literature, but not any official responses of regret or memorialization from either side. (Ravi Kumar / HT Photo)

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Paper hangings of migratory birds lead viewers to the Hall of Hope which houses a huge Tree of Hope fashioned out of barbed wire by designer Neeraj Sahai. People visiting the museum will be able to hang green leaves on the interactive piece turning the whole tree green, according to Sahai. (Ravi Kumar / HT Photo)